


Locks of Hair

by WinchesterWarrenSon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Middle School, Autistic Will Graham, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Stalker With a Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:44:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1437151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinchesterWarrenSon/pseuds/WinchesterWarrenSon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will is no longer the new kid now that Matthew Brown has come to town. He's creepy and has no friends, but Will doesn't have it in him to reject him when he asks to be Will's friend. Matthew is a tad bit obsessed, to the point of coveting a lock of Will's hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Locks of Hair

**Author's Note:**

> Originally this elementary/middle/high school AU was an RP I was doing with vespertineflora, but when we started it, we knew nothing about Matthew Brown, and now we do, and I felt like writing this. All the characters are eleven in this fan fic. 
> 
> Background information: Will moved into town at seven years old, and most of the characters attended elementary school together, including Beverly, Brian, Jimmy, and Freddie. Some of the characters weren't in their elementary school class, but still attended the same school and are now in their class: Abel Gideon, Frederick Chilton, Bedelia Du Maurier, etc. Abigail Hobbs is their teacher. 
> 
> Hannibal has had a crush on Will since the day he moved in, and while none of them really have a name for it, everyone has picked up on Will's autism. Freddie and Brian use his "odd" behavior as an excuse to bully him, but Hannibal is scary so they don't really get away with it much. Hannibal invites Will to his house all the time and they're best friends. Alana and Jack are in their circle of friends since elementary school. The only ones who know for a fact that Will is autistic are the adults (Will's dad, Hannibal's parents, their teachers, etc.). Will's mother left because she couldn't have a "normal" kid but is still alive and will enter the picture again one day. 
> 
> Hannibal does become a murderer when he and Will are in college and have been a couple for most of their high school career. The murder is triggered by his possessiveness of Will and a classmate overstepping their bounds, similarly to how Matthew will in this fic, but due to their ages, Matthew gets to keep his life. Mischa Lecter died before Will moved into town via drowning. 
> 
> I think that's all you need to know....

The staring was disconcerting, but maybe he wasn't actually staring at him and that was just how he concentrated on his work. Will knew that he tended to stare at spaces on the wall when the fuzzy feeling started to settle in. So he didn't say anything about it. He didn't tell a teacher, and he brushed off the concerns that Alana, Jack, and Hannibal would voice to him.

Matthew was a little strange, but Will didn't really see anything wrong with it. He liked photography and had joined the photography club (who had Freddie Lounds as club president, whoop de doo), but it seemed he didn't like Freddie all that much, which made him good in Will's book. He didn't really have any friends, but the photographs he took were mostly of objects. He had a lot of photographs of medical equipment (he said that he visited the hospital a lot because of his mother's job as an X-ray technician), and while Will himself didn't have interest in medical equipment, he could understand the need to express one's interests in overlapping ways. 

What didn't seem to add up much was his fixation on Will. But Will was pretty sure Matthew just wanted to be his friend and wasn't so sure how to go about it. 

He picked up on things that Jack and Alana didn't really pick up on; Hannibal could, too, but somehow it was different when Matthew did it. 

And with Matthew, there was some kind of . . . feeling that he understood him better than the others did. Hannibal mostly listened to Will when they talked and occasionally said things, as though trying to figure out where Will was coming from and determining the best thing to say in response. (Don't get Will wrong, he really liked Hannibal. Hannibal was his best friend. But there were times where he felt that there wasn't much of a connection. Though he had to admit that he hadn't felt that it was lacking until he started hanging out with Matthew.) Matthew, however, just seemed to . . . _get_ him without having to talk about how Will was different. 

"I wouldn't say you're different at all," Matthew said one day, when Will was talking to him as they took a walk around the neighborhood (Matthew had moved in further down the road from Will and Alana). "I'd say everyone else is different."

"That doesn't make much sense," Will had replied. 

"Of course it does. They're all different, so they feel the need to become a herd of sheep and follow each other's examples. It's in their genetic code to do that. To be a follower. To not have an individual thought in their head. To lie when they do have a thought that they think is abnormal. But you," Matthew smiled that odd smile that made Alana very uncomfortable and made Hannibal grit his teeth when he'd see it shot in Will's direction. "You don't hide. You tell it how it is, and that scares them. And there's more of them, so they're able to make it so being yourself makes life difficult. They make you have to learn how to be like them, just because they're too scared to think for a second that their way of living is insufficient." 

"It doesn't scare Hannibal or Jack or Alana."

Matthew laughed a little. 

"Doesn't it?" 

Will furrowed his eyebrows. Matthew brought his hand up and gently caressed the back of Will's head. His hand stilled at where his head met his neck and gently tugged on the wisp of hair that was there. Matthew had the habit of doing that without asking if he had permission, but this was the first time that Will didn't tell him to take his hand off. They stopped walking beside the dirt road, and Matthew looked into Will's face, though did not make eye contact (which Will appreciated). 

"You've learned how to behave like them, wouldn't you say?" Matthew asked. 

Will hesitated, but he slowly nodded. 

"Have they met the real you? The one who doesn't grin and bare it?"

"Hannibal has," Will said. Which was true. 

"How did he react?" 

"He's been very understanding. His mother is a therapist and he's very intelligent, so he knows that it doesn't make me - "

"Dangerous?"

Will nodded. 

"That's a lot of effort to prove to people that you're not something that you really aren't. Don't you think?"

Will frowned. 

"It's . . . necessary. Because of people like Freddie and Brian."

"But if they really did believe you to be dangerous, they'd be treating you differently than they do now. They'd be treating you like they treat Hannibal, 'cause they're scared of him. They're scared of me, too. They know you're not dangerous because they're not scared of you. They're just being assholes. Perpetuating the myth that just because they can't understand you, that means you can't be trusted, even though they know that's not true. It's just how they're able to fit in. Make sense?"

Will wasn't sure if it did, but he was really wishing they could change the conversation topic now. 

"I don't know."

"It's okay."

". . . Why are they scared of you?"

Matthew smiled. "I let them know that I didn't appreciate how they were treating you."

". . . How did you do that?"

"You know that knife I carry around in my bag?"

Will did know about it, and he had voiced his concern about it to Matthew, but he hadn't told a teacher or anyone else. 

"Yeah?" Will replied, feeling uneasy about it. 

"I just took it out and started waving it around nonchalantly while I was talking. It's amazing what you can get people to agree to do when you just _have_ something like this in your hand and aren't actually doing anything with it." 

That didn't sound very nice, but Matthew was his friend and.... 

"You didn't actually hurt them, right?"

"No."

"Good. See that you don't. Ever. Okay?"

Matthew took his hand off of Will's neck and lifted his hands up in surrender. 

"Your word is my command."

Will nodded, and they began to walk again. 

After a while, Will noticed that Matthew was rubbing his fingers together, which he didn't ordinarily do, so it was slightly perplexing. 

"Something wrong?" he asked. 

Matthew glanced at him, his eyes missing Will's face and going to his hair. Will caught on what he was thinking. 

"You really like my hair."

Matthew bowed his head. "I do."

". . . Do you want to keep part of it?" Why the heck not, it'd grow back. 

Matthew immediately looked back up, and the happiness in his eyes made it easy to forget that this wasn't a normal thing to be excited about. But who cared? If it made him happy and didn't hurt anyone, what did it matter? 

"Yes, I do."

"Got your knife?"

Matthew nodded rapidly and quickly took it out, the knife making a clicking sound as it was unsheathed and clicked into place. Will brought a hand up and pinpointed the best spot for Matthew to hack a lock off. He pulled at it once he found it, then Matthew took the hair into his hand, made it taut, then brought his knife to it and worked on sawing it off. 

It was free of Will's head after a few moments, and Matthew stared at it as though it was something sacred. Will smiled a little, glad he could make his friend happy. He didn't entirely understand why Matthew brought it to his lips and kissed it, but maybe he just liked the feeling of hair against his skin. Made sense to Will. 

"Thank you," Matthew said, twisted the hair around his finger and pocketing his knife with the other hand. 

"What're friends for?"

Back at school, Will noticed that Matthew had taken his hair and placed it inside of a plastic pouch in a bookmark and was now using his lock of hair as a bookmark. 

When Hannibal noticed, it took Will perhaps longer than it should have to see the anger building in his friend.


End file.
